Thursday, May 29, 2014

markshuttleworth.com from Mike ShuttleworthNew OpenStack <<Press
For those that didn’t make it, here are a few highlights.
First, Ubuntu is the leading OpenStack distribution,
with 55% of all production are using Ubuntu, nearly 5x the number for
RHEL. There is a big squabble at the moment between vendors in the RHEL
camp; for the record, Canonical is happy to work with vendors of
alternative OpenStack distributions on Ubuntu as long as we have a
commercial agreement that enables us to support users. Nonetheless, the
standard way to do OpenStack starts with Ubuntu followed by the addition
of Canonical’s cloud archive, installing OpenStack using those
packages.
Second, vendors are focused on interoperability through Canonical’s OpenStack Interop Lab (OIL).
We build OpenStack thousands of ways every month with permutations and
combinations of code from many vendors. Bring us a Juju charm of your
work, sign up to the OIL program and we’ll tell you which other vendors
you need to do more work with if you want to be interoperable with their
OpenStack offerings.
Third, Juju and MAAS are growing support for Windows and CentOS, with other operating systems on the horizon too (patches welcome!). Thanks to contributions from CloudBase Solutions,
you’ll get amazing orchestration of Windows and Linux apps on any cloud
or bare metal. If you have a Windows app that you want charmed up, they
are the guys to talk to! We did a live on-stage install of OpenStack
with Ubuntu KVM and Windows Hyper-V with the beta code, and expect it to
land in production Juju / MAAS in the coming weeks.from Mike Shuttleworth

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Canonical Announces First Partners to Ship Ubuntu Phones Around the Globe

bq and Meizu sign agreements to deliver and ship Ubuntu phones

Online campaigns with bq and Meizu will make Ubuntu phones available globally

Strong support for Ubuntu devices has also been received from carriers worldwide

February 19, 2014 11:50 AM Eastern Standard Time

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Canonical today announces it has signed agreements with mobile device manufacturers bq (Spain) and Meizu (China) to bring Ubuntu smartphones to consumers globally. Canonical is working with these partners to ship the first Ubuntu devices on the latest hardwarein 2014. Ubuntu has also received significant support from the world’s biggest carriers, some of which intend to work with OEM partners to bring phones to market this year.

“Ubuntu’s ongoing success on PCs, as well as the huge support it has gained for its mobile proposition provides the best opportunity to bring an alternative platform to market on our hardware”

Development programs have begun with the partners to provide smartphones with a superior user experience on mid to high end hardware for consumers around the world. Devices will be available to buy online through bq, Meizu and at Ubuntu.com.

Ubuntu introduces a new UI paradigm for mobile devices. Ubuntu puts content and services at the center of the experience, rather than hiding them behind stores and apps. This gives consumers a fresh and rich way to engage with their favorite videos, music and other mobile activities. It also means OEMs and operators have unprecedented customization opportunities with a common UI toolkit, which gives devices their own unique footprint and without fragmenting the platform.

Meizu is one of China’s most successful high-end smartphone manufacturers with over 1,000 employees, 600 retail stores and a global presence in China, Hong Kong, Israel, Russia and Ukraine. In January, the company announced its strategy to expand into other international markets as well as to ship phones in America later in 2014 and Ubuntu will be a key part of this expansion. Meizu designs and retails phones that are characterized by light, comfortable design as well as ease of use and functionality. “Ubuntu’s intuitive and visually stunning user interface aligns with our own ethos of producing simple, innovative mobile experiences. This partnership gives us an opportunity to develop a truly different and compelling offering that will support our strategy to deliver devices to both China as well as internationally,” says Li Nan, Meizu’s VP Sales and Marketing.

bq, is a manufacturer of multimedia devices operating in Europe and employing 600 people. In 2013, the company shipped almost 1.5 million devices and in less than a year has become the Spain's second biggest seller of unlocked smartphones. bq will bring Ubuntu onto its latest hardware specifications. “Ubuntu’s ongoing success on PCs, as well as the huge support it has gained for its mobile proposition provides the best opportunity to bring an alternative platform to market on our hardware,” Alberto Mendez, CEO, comments.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu, adds; “The mobile industry has long been looking for a viable alternative to those that reign today. Ubuntu puts the control back into the hands of our partners and presents an exciting platform for consumers, delivering an experience which departs from the tired app icon grid of Android and iOS and provides a fluid, content-rich experience for all.”

Carriers and major industry players that Canonical has engaged with have also shown their support for Ubuntu and an alternative operating system for the mobile market. To date, Ubuntu’s Carrier Advisory Group has 16 membersincluding Vodafone, EE, T-Mobile USA, Three Group, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, Telstra and Portugal Telecom. Canonical is also working with a breadth of ISV partners, including The Weather Channel, GrooveShark, Evernote and more, to bring the best applications and services to Ubuntu.

Portugal Telecom:“It is our commitment to keep working closely with Canonical to build a proposition for Ubuntu devices that will deliver a fresh, new and exciting experience for our users,” says Pedro Leitão should be: Member of the Board of Portugal Telecom responsible for the Consumer Segment.

Three Group:“Ubuntu is creating an innovative mobile web experience that brings more choice for customers, and opportunities for operators and OEMs who are keen to differentiate their devices.”

Telecom Italia:“We’ve been very active in helping shape Ubuntu for the Italian market by contributing to the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group for many months.”

Smart:“Ubuntu’s entry to the mobile phone market is definitely exciting. We see this as an interesting opportunity to help bring mobile innovations quicker to the market, lower access barriers and provide more choices in terms of apps and devices,” says Orlando B.Vea, chief wireless advisor at Smart. “We’re very keen to work with Ubuntu and the developer community in making this happen as it supports our goal to bring the mobile Internet to every Filipino.”

Smartfren (Indonesia)“We’ve been working closely with Canonical and the Carrier Advisory Group for several months, and look forward to being able to launch Ubuntu devices in the Indonesian market,” comments Richard Tan, deputy CEO.

About CanonicalCanonical is the company behind Ubuntu and the leading provider of services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise. With global teams of developers, support staff and engineering centers, Canonical is uniquely positioned to help partners and customers make the most of Ubuntu. Canonical is a privately held company.

Ubuntu is a free, open-source platform for client, server and cloud computing. It is the most widely used Linux on the top 1000 websites by traffic, the reference platform for OpenStack deployments, the most popular guest OS on public clouds, and ships on PCs from Dell, Lenovo, HP and other brands. Since its launch in 2004, it has become the preferred choice for open desktop and scale-out computing, from Fortune 500 companies to hardware makers, content providers, software developers and consumers.

About bqbq is a company dedicated to consumer electronics, which designs and develops both software and hardware. Its main division is multimedia devices (e-readers, tablets and smartphones), a market in which it is the leader in Spain. Its innovative spirit had led it to operate in emerging fields such as educational robotics, the development of reading platforms and 3D printing. In this latter market, it designs and manufactures its own 3D printer, the bq Witbox, which is distributed worldwide.

About MeizuEstablished in 2003 and headquartered in Zhuhai, China, Meizu designs and produces smartphones created to provide a simple, intuitive mobile experience for people whose time is expected to be simply spent in using their devices, instead of figuring out the way of using them.

Meizu expanded into the smartphone market in 2008 and has been committed to developing high-end smartphones ever since. Based on a business philosophy and commitment to pursuing perfection and long-term development, Meizu remains laser focused on developing innovative and user-friendly smartphones for consumers. With more than 1,000 employees and 600 retail stores, the company has built a global presence in Hong Kong, Israel, Russia and Ukraine.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Business

Google shuts down iGoogle, which joins long line of shuttered services

By Salvador Rodriguez

Los Angeles Times

Posted:
11/04/2013 03:59:52 PM PST

Updated:
11/04/2013 03:59:55 PM PST

Google (GOOG) kicked off November by killing off one of its little-used features.

The
Mountain Viewcompany got rid ofiGoogle, a tool that let users set up
personalized home page on their Web browser. The service was essentially
Google's version of the MSNBC, AOL or Yahoo (YHOO) home page.
The
decision isn't too surprising considering that these days, few set up a
home page for their Web browser. Nowadays, most users set the Web
browser to either bring up the last page viewed or their Facebook News Feed, for instance. And on smartphones and tablets, setting up home pages simply never caught on. Google
has a long history of starting and shutting services and features. Here
are a few notable Google services that have been killed off recently. Google Reader
Earlier
this year Google decided to end Google Reader, a service that allowed
users to collect story feeds for all their favorite websites into one
location. The decision angered thousands of users, who quickly
petitioned the company but had to turn to alternatives. Google Talk
The
company's chatting service was shuttered this year, but it was replaced
by Google Hangouts. The decision came as Google tried to consolidate
many of its communication services into one. Google Latitude
Google
also decided to shut down Google Latitude this year. Latitude was a
service that lets users easily share their location with friends. But
with the existence of Google+ as well as Foursquare and others, Google
decided that Latitude no longer served a purpose. Google Wave
When
Google first announced Wave, the service was met with excitement. Wave
let users communicate with each other in real time and share items like
YouTube videos with ease, but no one ever quite figured out what to do
with Wave. That's why users quickly stopped using the service, and
that's why Google ended it. Google Videos
Before YouTube,
there was Google Videos. But once Google purchased YouTube, there was
really no reason to keep hosting a separate social video website.
YouTube's popularity made Google Videos obsolete.
==================================================

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Mark Shuttleworth: Serious people are saying Ubuntu is better than Windows 8 on tablets

Summary: The Ubuntu OS on smartphones
and tablets has been grabbing headlines and gaining support quickly
since the plans were formally unveiled at the beginning of 2013. ZDNet
met the man behind Ubuntu to see what he had to say about the project.

Friday, February 22, 2013

www.datamation.com/print/http://www.datamation.com/news/survey-majority-of-erp-project-experience-budget-overruns-and-sche… 1/1
http://www.datamation.com/news/survey­majority­of­erp­project­experience­budget­overruns­and­schedule­delays.html
Back to article
Survey: Majority of ERP Project Experience Budget Overruns
and Schedule Delays
By Cynthia Harvey
February 21, 2013
A new survey conducted by Panorama Consulting finds that most enterprise resource planning (ERP) software projects experienced cost and budget overruns in 2012. In
addition, many companies aren't seeing the benefits they anticipated from ERP deployments. Strangely, many companies still label their ERP projects a "success" in
spite of these problems.
Computerworld's Chris Kanaracus reported on the study, writing, "Last year, the average cost of an ERP project among those surveyed was US$7.1 million and would
take 17.8 months, with 61 percent reporting the implementation would take longer than planned, compared to 54 percent in a survey conducted in 2011 by Panorama,
which provides ERP selection and implementation services. However, the percentage of respondents reporting cost overruns fell to 53 percent, compared to 56 percent
in 2011 and 74 percent in 2010. But 60 percent of survey­takers said they had received 50 percent or less of the expected benefits of their project in 2012, up from 48
percent who said so in 2011."
However, according to the Panorama press release, "Despite these results, a full 86 percent of respondents are satisfied with the system itself and 60 percent indicate
their ERP project was a 'success.' Nearly seven out of ten respondents (69 percent) also indicate at least some level of satisfaction with their chosen ERP vendor."
ITWeb quoted Panorama's Eric Kimberling, who said, "But the delta between actual ERP implementation results and the self­reported satisfaction levels indicates that
companies are setting expectations of the business benefits they should achieve from an ERP system far too low, and are likely neither developing the performance
measurement indicators they need to accurately determine ROI nor sharing those indicators with their employees."
Earlier this month, IT Journal's Alex Woodie reported on a separate Panorama study, which found, "the market share of cloud­ and SaaS­based ERP systems grew from
6 percent in 2011 to 18 percent in 2012, which spells trouble for traditional, tier­one ERP providers

You'll see a lot less of this in 2013: a businesswoman uses a netbook. Photograph: Peter Titmuss/Alamy

Sayonara, netbooks.
The end of 2012 marks the end of the manufacture of the diddy machines
that were - for a time - the Great White Hope of the PC market.
If
you believed ABI Research in 2009, then next year netbooks (initially
defined as machines with Intel Atom processors and screens less than
10in diagonally - though the definition became fuzzier over time) will
sell 139m. (The original ABI press release with the forecast, linked from the Wikipedia page on netbooks, and still there until May 2011, has disappeared.
But you can get a flavour of its optimism from the URL of the press
release (which contains the phrase "an era begins") and the research paper it was offering in late 2010 which had forecasts for netbook sales through to 2015 and the names of 23 vendors (including - quiz question - Nokia.)
Still, there's an eWeek article
from July in which ABI says that "consumer interest in netbooks shows
no sign of waning, and the attraction remains the same: value rather
than raw performance."
Actually, the number sold in 2013 will be very much closer to zero than to 139m. The Taiwanese tech site Digitimes points out
that Asus, which kicked off the modern netbook category with its Eee PC
in 2007, has announced that it won't make its Eee PC product after
today, and that Acer doesn't plan to make any more; which means that
"the netbook market will officially end after the two vendors finish
digesting their remaining inventories."
Asustek and Acer were the
only two companies still making netbooks, with everyone else who had
made them (including Samsung, HP and Dell) having shifted to tablets.
Asustek and Acer were principally aiming at southeast Asia and South
America - but of course those are now targets for smartphones and cheap
Android tablets.
That's something of a turnround for Acer, which in September was still insisting that it would "continue to make netbooks", even though Lenovo, Dell and Asustek had all withdrawn.
Intel,
which made its Atom processor with the intent of aiming at lower-cost,
lower-power, longer-battery-life PCs, is still going to keep making the
Atom; those will be pushed into the embedded market for point-of-sale
applications.

What killed the netbook?

There are four
candidates: the rest of the PC market (including the arrival of
ultrabooks); the economy; the economics of netbooks; and the iPad plus
the attendant rise of tablets.

The rest of the PC market

Looking
at the rest of the PC market first: the writing has been on the wall
for a while. Even in May 2009, when netbooks were just two years old
(and the iPad wasn't even a rumour), Jack Schofield was asking whether netbooks were losing their shine, pointing out that

US-based
DisplaySearch indicates that while first quarter netbook sales were up
by 556% compared with the same quarter last year, they were down by 26%
sequentially, compared with the fourth quarter of 2008. Notebook sales
declined 24% sequentially, so netbook shipments are no longer growing
against the market trend.

As he also pointed out
then, a key factor in that slowdown was that Linux didn't work well as
an OS for users who were expecting to run PC software - which meant that
Windows XP had to be pressed into the task. But that meant cleaving to
Microsoft's demands:

"the increase in specifications
that has pushed up netbook prices. The classic netbook was cheaper than a
notebook because it had a 7-inch screen, a small Flash drive, an Intel
Atom processor, and used Linux instead of Microsoft's Windows Vista.
Today's netbooks have 10- or 12-inch screens, 160MB hard drives, and run
Windows XP. It is still cheaper to make a netbook than a notebook, but
the gap has narrowed."

The promise of the netbook was
that it would be more portable, have longer battery life, and run all
the software you needed. With the overall PC market shifting towards
more and more replacements, the netbook arrived at the right time to
create a "first-time" market - of people buying a machine purely for its
portability and/or battery life.
There wasn't anything to compete
directly with netbooks on price. But other lower-end notebooks could
offer bigger screens and more storage. The price delta became thinner
and thinner, and as battery life improved on cheaper notebooks, it
became harder to justify scrimping and just buying a netbook.
So the availability of laptops that cost less than previously was certainly a factor.
The
suggestion that ultrabooks - very thin, light laptops - killed the
netbook doesn't make sense, since ultrabooks have barely made any impact
on the laptop market, let alone the wider PC market. But Apple's
introduction of an 11in MacBook Air in late 2010 (no optical drive,
solid-state storage) at $999 showed the PC industry that there was
definitely money to be made at the higher end. That's what kicked off
the ultrabook scheme, even though it hasn't yet repaid the investment.
The MacBook Air probably didn't take any sales away from netbooks - the
price difference would see to that - but it did point out to PC
manufacturers struggling to make a margin that cheaper wasn't actually
the way to go.

The economy

The global economy cratered
just as netbooks were beginning to take off. Remember the credit crunch
of 2008, and how the banks nearly failed? From Q4 2008, the PC market
saw three quarters in which shipments shrank. But those were followed
from Q4 2009 by three quarters of growth above 20% (because the
comparison with shrinking growth always looks good). And PC sales were,
in the past, tied to the economy; when it grew, they grew, roughly in
line.
Even so, netbook shipments grew strongly from 2008 to 2009. The slowdown hit in 2010: early that year, sales "took a nosedive", IDC's David Daoud told PCWorld,
falling from over 2m in Q1 2010 to only just over 1.5m by the end of
the year. By the fourth quarter of 2011, US netbook sales had fallen to
about 750,000.
US netbook sales Q1 2010 - Q4 2011. Source: IDC
A similar trend was reflected worldwide, with Q1 2010 shipments of 9m
dropping to about 6.2m by Q4 2011. But that's the quarter in which
overall PC sales rose by more than 20%. Clearly, the economy didn't do
it.

The economics of netbooks

This is a different matter
to the world economy, though. What's the key thing about netbooks? That
they are (or were) cheap - the Eee PC started (in its Linux incarnation)
as a $199 product.
The trouble with that sort of pricing,
though, is that it leaves very little margin. Especially once netbooks
all began running Windows XP, where the licence could cost anything from
$30 upwards per unit, and more like $50 per unit for Windows 7, there
just wasn't much room left for the manufacturer to make a profit.
And
besides that, just as pundits thought netbooks were looking forward to a
grand time, other things happened. PC manufacturers needed better
margins (because of the Windows 7 pricing squeeze, and a market that was
slowing and shifting further to laptops). And then Apple announced the
iPad.

The iPad and all the tablets

In January 2010, Apple
announced the iPad. In April 2010, it went on sale. By mid-2010, a host
of other companies were announcing their own tablets (running Android).
Suddenly tablets were the hot thing in the computing market, and the netbook looked a bit like, well, last year's thing.
It's
notable that the first area where netbook sales began falling was the
US market, where the iPad first had its big success. The irony is that
the iPad cost more than a netbook, and arguably does less: you can't run
Office on it, nor your favourite Windows app. But it did have better
portability than a netbook, and much better battery life (some netbooks
on sale in 2009 were only getting three hours
- no different from pricier laptops). And like the netbook it had no
optical drive, and limited storage, meaning that cloud services were
key.
By February this year, it was clear that the netbook was done.
And here is the killer stat: shipments of tablets in 2011 overtook
those of netbooks - 63m against 29.4m. (The year before it had been the
other way around, at 23m v 39.4m; but that was the first year of
"modern" tablets.)
And for 2012, tablet shipments are forecast to
hit 122.3m (according to IDC's latest forecast, made in December).
Netbooks, meanwhile, don't seem to have troubled the forecasters this
year. And for 2013? IDC reckons tablet shipments will hit 172m. And we
know what the figure will be for netbooks - zero (apart from inventories
being cleared).

Conclusion

Netbooks had a short but
interesting life - going from the one-time saviour of the PC industry,
to just another mispriced attempt to push some low-powered Intel chips
and garner more money for Microsoft.
But the squeeze on pricing,
plus the fact that Windows licences aren't free, meant that they got
pushed into a tiny niche: worse specifications than slightly pricier
laptops, no margin for the manufacturers, and worse battery life and
portability than the burgeoning number of tablets with custom apps.
The
questions that do remain is what's going to happen to the various
government contracts in countries such as Greece and Malaysia to equip
schools with netbooks - or whether those contracts have finished, or
been discontinued.
What, too, about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project?
Essentially, it's trying to get netbook-like devices to classrooms in
developing countries. There hasn't been much news of huge wins this
year, though, going by its end-of-year blogpost. Perhaps it will function independently of the death of consumer netbooks.
So farewell, netbooks. It was nice knowing you, but ultimately, you were just another PC.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Written by Clem on Tuesday, November 20th, 2012 @ 10:27 am | Main Topics

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 14 “Nadia”.

Linux Mint 14 Nadia

For the first time since Linux Mint 11, the development team was able to capitalize on upstream technology which works and fits its goals. After 6 months of incremental development, Linux Mint 14 features an impressive list of improvements, increased stability and a refined desktop experience. We’re very proud of MATE, Cinnamon, MDM and all the components used in this release, and we’re very excited to show you how they all fit together in Linux Mint 14.

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